Podfic Entries on Fanlore

[paraka]

There's currently a discussion post going on at fanlore about how podfic entries should be made. I'd really appreciate hearing more opinions from podficcers on the matter.

For those interested, here's a little background on the situation.

Back in June there was a post on fanlore asking for suggestions of useful subcategories for the Fanworks category. anatsuno suggested a podfic subcategory. A template and category for podfic was created, but with a sort of warning air to the discussion that there needs to be more podfic entries on Fanlore to justify having the category.

In response to this, and in honour of amplirecathon, I made it a personal goal to make a Fanlore page for every podfic that was rec'ed over there. Using the new podfic template and the Written by the Victors podfic page as a reference I started making entries. I uploaded about 20 of them in July, only to have them all edited by Fanlore Gardeners right away. I had named the pages in the same format as Written by the Victors (podfic) page, but it turns out, you only add the (podfic) honourific if there's a need to disambiguate it from another page. Since most of the pages I was making didn't have any conflicting pages on Fanlore they were all renamed to "Title" instead of "Title (podfic)"

I was slightly uncomfortable with this but didn't want to go against Fanlore's rules, so just kind of left things as they were. Until this week when it was noticed that the entry for This Never Happened had been changed. Which, of course, it's a wiki, people make changes, but in this case, the entry about a podfic was changed to say that This Never Happened is a fic which happened to have a podfic about it.

There was nothing meaningful added about the fic to the entry, all the info in the entry was still about the podfic. The change just... left the impression that the fic was the "real" fanwork and that the podfic was just something that happened because of it.

And I'm not saying that's what the editor was intending to do. But... I think that's how a lot of fandom sees podfic. As this thing that happens to fanfics, but isn't very notable on it's own. The thread on fail_fandomanon certainly implies this (note, that thread is in response to the initial discussions over podfic entries on Fanlore, but they completely misinterpreted what was going on).

I feel that, until there's some stronger indication in the Fanlore entries that the entry is about the podfic well meaning editors are going to continue changing them so they're fic entries which happen to have podfics. The entry on fanlore is discussing different ways we can make this happen but it's also kindled a new discussion about whether or not podfics should have their own pages, which frustrates me and also confirms that podfic isn't being thought of as its own work. So yeah, more voices in this would be appreciated.

Comments

[jelazakazone]

I have to say that conversation is way over my head:(

It also looks like other forms of fanworks are not appreciated/noticed/mentioned (art, vids) which is a damn shame.

[busaikko]

I was wondering, so I took a look at Fanlore, and was kind of shocked.

What a search for podfic looks like now (all those redirects, those are "Hi! Redoing all your work!" notices, aren't they?):


What an entry for a podfic looks like now:


Which is ridiculous. If I want to read about podfic, I don't want to have to wade through a lot of fic summaries and reviews. I want to know what that podfic did that was new and original, how it was recorded (I'm a geek, I want to know OS and program information /o\ ), the podfic's reception in fandom, and reviews and responses to the podfic.

It also raises the question of what happens with podfic anthologies: will they be broken up, each fic in an anthology appended like an afterthought to fic entries? I'd much rather have them together, with links to fic pages (and to individual podfic pages, if for example one of the podfics in an anthology was notable for, say, being sung a cappella, etc.).

[caput_mortuum]

I just stumbled over your entry by searching for something on the AO3 and it's disheartening to see that fanlore seems to have an unreflected fic bias just as strong as the AO3's. This is ridiculous, have these issues been solved since you posted this?

[mallk10]

I don't really use fanlore all that much (although it is the site that introduced me to podfic in the first place; if you google podfic, its introduction to podfic is the first thing that comes up), but in response to the comments that AO3 is text biased, I don't necessarily think so.

First off, as far as I know, AO3 is the only site made for fanworks, that supports podfic, and has a rapidly growing podfic tag that's easy to navigate.

Secondly, the creators have advocated podfic specifically on their tumblr page, and have made several recs and links to it on that page.

Overall I think AO3 is a pretty podfic friendly place. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents here. :3